A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. And Jesus said to the crowd, this is a continuation, of course, of this chapter six of Saint John. All the readings of August are from that chapter, and this is the third reading, the third Sunday. Remember, the crowd had followed Jesus up to up around Bethesda up in the north of the lake. Then after the multiplication of the loaves and he's walking upon the water, he returns back to Capernaum, and he's speaking to them in the synagogue, apparently.
So he says to the crowds, I myself am the living bread. Come down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he shall live forever. And the bread notice how now he identifies bread with his flesh. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.
When the Jews heard this, they quarreled among themselves saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? And then Jesus said to them an explanation. Let me solemnly assure you, you do not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the father who has life sent me and I have life because of the father, so the man who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and died in the desert, nonetheless, the man who feeds on this bread shall live forever. And this is the gospel, the good news indeed of the lord.
My flesh is food indeed. My blood is drink indeed. These words, of course, are taken from this chapter six of Saint John. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Well, right off, I repeat what I said on the first Sunday of August.
The best I can do is to beg, to plead, to pray that you will read quietly. It'll take about two minutes, two or three minutes, this chapter six of Saint John so that you'll get it's you'll get it in its entirety. Now to take any any remember, this is this is a written word. This was not the spoken word. This is written.
And to think that you can break up a very serious document into four Sundays spaced six days apart and make sense of it, you wouldn't do that with a will. You wouldn't do that with a contract. You wouldn't do that with any serious document. And this chapter six has a unity. It's powerful, but you have to see it as a totality.
And that's what I've been trying to do in the first two talks. And the second two talks are all on this chapter six. And today, I'm going to finish what I would call the exposition. And next Sunday, I'm going to try to pull it all together and then tie it in with what the Mark, and Luke had to say about Christ's changing bread and wine into his body and blood at the last supper, and then bring in Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians as a totally separate witness. So we'll try to tie it all together because there's nothing so important in your religious life as a Catholic than your faith in the holy Eucharist.
Now the word Eucharist simply is a Greek word meaning thanksgiving. What do you mean by it? Now that those opening prayers that I was supposed to read, I didn't read the what some of the words there. Not once did they refer to the real presence of Jesus Christ, what I read to you at the beginning of the mass. They talk about spiritual food.
Christ says, my flesh is you have to eat and my blood, you have to drink. Anybody can believe in the spiritual banquet, and that's what was one of the they didn't call this the mass in that prayer I read. That's from taken from some book or other. You see what's happening in the Catholic church? We are downgrading the real presence of Jesus Christ in the holy Eucharist.
Now that may not be that may it certainly ought to be news to you. But if it is, it's unhappily so. We talk about a banquet. We talk about a celebration. We don't talk about the mass.
We don't talk about the real presence. People come into church now without thinking of genuflection. You can go in some of our newest churches, and you have to have a radar to find the blessed sacrament. And those churches aren't a million miles away from here. Blessed sacrament was stuck over in some little corner.
The latest one I was in, they had a white light in a in a white alcove so that you barely you could barely see the light because it wasn't distinguished from the wall. You had to hunt to find the blessed sacrament. Now what I am this chapter six is not my creation. And as I told you, there may be differences of translation from reader to reader or translator to but that is normal. There is no difficulty with the words, except some of them, the English is not very faithful to the Greek, as I will point out.
They tone it down. Why? Are they afraid to say what Christ said? This is my flesh. Eat it.
This is my blood. Drink it. Several years ago, there was a lady who thought she was going to become a Catholic, and she wanted to become a Catholic. But the Lord stepped in and took her to himself real fast. Didn't have time.
But she she said, why is there so much there about blood and flesh? I didn't put it there. The translator didn't put it there. Jesus Christ put it there. And he's either the son of god or he's a charlatan or a maniac.
And And as CS Lewis says, he ought to be locked up. Or he is what he said he is, the son of god. And he is the one who said, this is my flesh. This is my blood. And unless you drink it, you won't have life in you.
And you can't you see this idea called a a spiritual banquet. It's the holy sacrifice of the mass. Of course, it's a banquet we share in the last supper, but the main thrust is sacrifice, altar, priest. As you know, in some of these newer churches, there's no corpus on the on the cross. Just a plain cross.
Where the whole point of the cross is not a hunk of wood, but the body of Jesus Christ, the son of god. And you can't escape it. You can eliminate him from the cross, but what have you left? An electric chair, a rifle of several soldiers, a gibbet to hang it. The cross without Jesus Christ is nothing.
And so now today, I wanna take up the third see, last Sunday. Now notice how it goes. Christ performs this is all chapter six. He performs two outstanding miracles. The one, he feeds a multitude with bread, and it's about the feast of the Passover.
Then he walks on water. Then comes a long discussion between him and the Jews. They have followed him back from the side. They've come back to Capernaum, and, apparently, they're in the synagogue. And there's a a big discussion.
The Jews want they want him to give them this bread forever just as Moses gave them manna in the desert. And then Christ says, you're wrong. Moses didn't give you that manna. It was god my father who gave it to them. And then Christ goes on to identify himself with the food of life, the bread of life.
And then he moves from saying, I am the bread of life to saying, my flesh is that bread. You see how that argument goes? It's terrific. It's as if our lord said, look. I'm gonna show you who I am with what I do.
And he fed a multitude with bread, five barley loaves, two fish. Then to top it, he's he walks on water. Now you say, who are you? Then he tells us that he's the he's the he refers to himself as the son of man. He refers to his father.
He says about his father who sent him. Now I admit, there's no direct statement he's the Messiah there. I know that. But the point is, our lord has said, look what I've done. Now look what I'm saying and take it seriously.
Because as we will see, I mean every blasted word of it, Literally. Literally. Now that's my point today, where our lord takes that leap from saying, I am the bread of life, then he identifies the bread with his own flesh, with his own blood. Now I wanna repeat just a few verses, but these are so important. Our lord says to them, amen.
And this is very you see, when he introduces a very important statement, he uses that formal introduction. Amen. Amen. That means so be it, you know. Amen.
Amen. I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For because my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink, whoever notice how he keeps coming back to this almost odd nausea. Just as the living father sent me and I have life because of the father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me, because of me.
This is the bread which came down from heaven. Now what was the reaction of the Jews? If you wanna say, what how did what did Christ mean by these words? Is he only talking about some kind of a spiritual banquet? Which you see, those words, which I said at the beginning of this mass.
You don't have to believe in the real presence to to use those words. Did Christ mean those words to be taken spiritually, metaphorically, as a figure of speech, or was he talking literally? Well, let's see what his congregation thought. What did those who were there and heard him, who had been with him from the beside thy day back to Capernaum. Let's see what they thought of it.
And what are we told? When Christ spoke as I've just read his own words and there's no question of the text, the Greek text, They quarrel. Now that's the translation that you have or they quarrel or they disputed. Do you know that the Greek word is mine o mine? And do you know what it means?
It means to be ravenly drunk, to be out of your mind, to rage, to rave. That's what the word means. It doesn't mean to say they discussed or had a debate or they argued. It means that they were furious, they were enraged that this man was talking what? Cannibalism.
And who could believe it? Who could believe it? Do you believe it? If I stood up here and and said those words, what would you think? What would you think?
And so what? They left him. Many of his disciples left him. That's in the crowd. The people who had followed him, a lot of them left him because they said, who can believe this?
Who can accept this? Indeed, who can? And now now comes the clincher. Now comes the clincher. Remember, here is a crowd of people who followed him for days, who've gone through a lot with him, and he sees them leaving him now.
He doesn't say one tiny little word to dissuade them, to say, look. Oh, you people, you know you've got me wrong. You have misunderstood me. I don't mean those words literally. I mean the metaphorically.
We're talking spiritual food. Is that what he said? Not one word. Not one word. Now what happens next?
This is the clincher. Our lord turns to his notice. It specifically says the 12, and he knows that one of them is a traitor. That's the text. That's the text.
There's a lot in this chapter six. Our lord turns to the 12, his hand chosen men who have been with him for maybe two years. He turns to them, and now you know what he says. Are you going to leave me too? Did he did he say, look, you guys.
Don't be so thick. Don't be so dumb. Don't don't take me literally. This is poetry. This is such these are formula.
I I didn't mean this literally. Come on. Wake up. Be sensible. Don't be like that mob, that crowd, the bogus.
Did he say anything like that? Not one word. Are you going to leave me too? In other words, he was willing to let the 12 chosen men, his apostles, leave him because they understood him to be talking absolute sacrilegious, blasphemy, nonsense, just as the crowd did. And good old Peter then speaks up and says, Lord, if we leave you, where are we going?
In other words, Peter doesn't understand anything about it. He says, it's hopeless. We can't we have no other place to go. We don't understand what you're saying, but we don't have any other place to go, so we'll stay with you. That's what he's saying.
We have nowhere else to go. Now the whole point of this is, you see, the whole point is, if Christ did not mean these words literally, we and he remembered, he repeated the idea sentence after sentence after sentence. He has built this thing up all the way from that first miracle of feeding the crowd all the way down now to where he's talked about food and bread. He's talked about himself being the bread, and then he says explicitly, my flesh is the bread and my blood is the drink. Unless you do it, unless you eat me and drink me, you don't have life.
That's what Christ said. He was willing to leave the crowd go. He was willing to let his 12 chosen apostles go. Now if he didn't mean that, who's at fault? If Christ didn't want mean these words to be taken literally, who has misled human beings for two thousand years?
It's like CS Lewis says, there's one thing you cannot say about Christ is that he was a good man only. Here's one instance where you can't say that. Either Christ either Christ was a lunatic and as new as as as Lewis says, thinks himself an egg in a frying pan. He said liter any mere Christianity. Or he was a first rate liar and the world's greatest hypocrite, or he was the son of god, god himself.
But you can't say that he was only a good man. How could a good man intentionally have led millions and millions of people astray? Because remember, you as I say, those who claim and there have been plenty of people, Catholics and non Catholics, who've had tremendous experiences of the Eucharist. I know that and you know that. I have not I'm not saying anything about that.
I'm only saying that all I can expect and all that Jesus Christ ever told me to expect was, it's a tremendous act of faith. Are you too going to leave me, our lord said? Are you? And old Peter said, then where are we going to go? Where?
Because, you know, whole our lord's whole message, his whole life comes back to this. What did he mean at that last supper when he took wine and said, this is my blood. And he took bread and said, this is my body. What did he mean? I'm the first one who who agrees with the protestants of the sixteenth century.
I will I'll agree with him completely. If if that's all we have to say, it is ambiguous. Of course, it is. It can mean almost anything you want it to mean. But the point I've been making and what what you would hold in mind are are faith, not an experience.
Maybe you've had it, maybe you haven't. But don't put your life and your faith and your eternity, your immortality on the wishful thinking of having an experience. That is terrible. That is a disaster. That's a tragedy because that's not what Christ asked you to do.
He asked you to be with Peter. I don't understand how this is possible that god can be in a little translucent piece of bread That a couple minutes ago, I'll I'll throw in that before mass, I I drop the host on the floor, I toss him into the wastebasket. And a couple minutes later, just because I say, this is my body, this is my that I bow down and say, my lord and my god. Think about that. It's absolutely beyond words.
It's a tremendous act of faith, but yet faith doesn't mean an absurdity, as Chesterton says. Faith means we have motives of believing, motives of credibility as you have in any court of law so that our faith manifested chiefly in the sacrifice of the mass. Vatican two says that. I don't. That the heart and the soul of Christian worship is the holy sacrifice of the mass.
Notice they don't call a spiritual banquet a celebration and all of that froth. They call it the holy sacrifice of the mass. That's Vatican two. So this is a tremendous act of faith. And so I urge you to take seriously.
To you your faith needs this bolstering up. See, many many Catholics, many Catholics going to communion, going to mass, it's a formality. And let's face it. It's something they have been used to when they were kids. You grow up with it.
And, you know, it takes something to shock us, to shock us. That can be all kinds of things. But why wait till something like that happens? Why wait? It isn't a lack of faith which makes you read and study and pray that your face faith will be strengthened.
That's not because you're doubting Thomas'. That's because you're a Peter. But don't minimize, for heaven's sakes, this act of faith that you're making. When you bend a knee and you come into this church before the altar, which is easy to find, there it is, you can't miss the tabernacle in this church. You can't miss the cross and the god's body on the cross.
Thank goodness. But that's not true of every Catholic church today by no means. So when I urge you to read this chapter six in its entirety, to get the totality that Christ talked about bread in the beginning, he multiplied the bread, he told them that he was going to give them the bread, He says, I am the bread. And then he says, my flesh is that bread and my blood is that we drink. He said that.
And then in those sentences which I've just read to you, he emphasizes, repeats it, and repeats it, and repeats it. And what's the result? What how did the crowd understand him? He's a maniac. And they fought and raved and raged among themselves as if they were out of their minds because here was a rabbi talking and talking literally about cannibalism.
I don't know how it works. I don't know how Christ becomes present in that Eucharist. I only know he said that, and that that's what Luther said. Luther said remember, Luther believed in the real presence. He said, Christ said, this is my body, but he didn't tell us how it works.
So let's not get all wound up in some Greek words like transubstantiation, which happens to be Latin, of course. But the point is our faith hangs on this. Here is why how we a Catholic is totally different from every other Christian. Unless they're a Catholic Christian, Greek Orthodox, something like that. That is the real presence, the physical presence of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.
And when we think about it, all we can say, my lord and my god. I don't understand. But if we turn away from you, where do we go? In the name of the father and of the son and holy spirit. Amen.